On April
20, 2005, incidentally the birthday of Hitler and the anniversary of the
Columbine High School rampage, the local news station reported on a “wonderful”
program being used in Spokane, Washington to “keep our schools safe.”
Considering the spate of recent incidents of guns in schools in Spokane,
that claim is questionable.

The
program, called “Keep Guns Out of School” pays $75 rewards “to students
who contacted an adult when they had information that lead to solving
vandalism, removing a weapon or confiscating drugs on school property.”

A lady
working with the program in Spokane went on the air stating to the effect
that anything that produced safer schools was acceptable. In other
words, the end justifies the means.

News
articles are appearing nation-wide about this “wonderful” program. Quite
obviously, the source of it, claims or no claims, is not local to any
of the areas reporting on the program.

It didn’t
take long to find the source: the United States Department of Justice
/ Safe Neighborhoods Program. Another
of those top-down but made to appear bottom-up, grass-roots, local
in flavor initiatives funded by federal grants (with strings attached)
to insure that what is done in Spokane, Washington or Minneapolis, Minnesota
or _______ (fill in the blank) conforms to the federal agenda in the systems
approach to global order.

But
please don’t think for a moment that the Keep Guns Out of School program
is the first of its kind. Far from it. The DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance
Education) program, used in schools for many, many years is another of
this same ilk. It also taught children to “snitch” on siblings, friends,
neighbors and parents just as the Hitler youth snitched on their siblings,
friends, neighbors and parents.

Another
of the same ilk is the DFYIT (Drug Free Youth In Town) program out of
Texas. This program rewards children who join the club which requires
them to give regular urine samples that must be drug free. Those who join
and are drug free are given discounts (rewards) by local businesses.

Does
the program decrease the incidence of drug abuse? No. Six years after
being implemented in the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho schools, the schools were
bringing in dope sniffing dogs to search students, lockers and cars on
school grounds. The program was implemented in the Nine Mile Falls School
District northwest of Spokane in the mid 1990’s. The dope sniffing dogs
are now being used there also.

What
has resulted from the program is that any student who does not join “the
club” is considered to be on dope. After all, as the flawed logic goes,
if you aren’t on dope you would have no qualms about giving a urine sample.
Constitutional rights are not part of the equation just as they aren’t
part of the equation with cameras placed at intersections to watch traffic
— if you aren’t breaking the law, why should you care if there’s a camera
watching you? The same is true of body searches at airports — if you aren’t
breaking the law, why should you have a problem with being searched?

Whatever
happened to innocent until proven guilty? Guess that archaic notion only
stands when one of the proponents of this concept gets caught in the snare
he/she thinks is so great so long as it applies to everyone but them!
The mind-set is one of extreme ignorance, and in the long haul, self-destructive.

Now
we have the Safe Neighborhoods Program that incorporates the underlying
concept of both the DARE program and the DFYIT program in rewarding students
for being snitches. So, today we reward the child for snitching, for doing
what we want. And in the process we teach the child to be extrinsically
motivated (motivated by external stimuli), reinforced over time, the concept
becomes engrained, natural, part of the subconscious. This is how we train
an animal, just as the rats in the Skinner Rat Box, just as the Pavlovian
slobbering dogs.

Now
we’ve set this child up beautifully: he/she will do whatever we want so
long as the reward is something he/she wants. Today the cause is noble
— keeping guns out of schools, but what about tomorrow? Who will be that
child’s “handler” tomorrow? And what reward will he/she offer? And will
that reward be something the child will want, bearing in mind that the
child has also been trained to respond to his/her emotions (wants) as
a priority over his/her intellect (thinking and reasoning)?

With
this in mind, what happens when a child is standing there with a gun in
his/her hand with that gun pointed at someone and there is no one there
to reward that child for not pulling the trigger or the child will be
rewarded for pulling the trigger?

And
therein lays the problem with extrinsic motivation. Extrinsically motivating
an animal via the methods of BF Skinner or IP Pavlov (also known as operant
conditioning) is one thing, doing it with humans is another, the major
difference being the level of intellect or mental capability that differentiates
man from animal.

Guns
in schools are not funny; nothing to be joked about; not to be ignored.
The same is true with drugs, alcohol or any other vice. But the Keep Guns
Out of School program, along with the myriad of “government” programs
of the same ilk, is not going to cure the problem in the long haul. If
anything they exacerbate the problem by portending to be a solution. They
are not a solution.

The
only solution that is a solution is to address the underlying philosophy
(humanism) that is the basis of education in the schools today and is
the basis of the problems that plague our society today. And unless that
happens our country will continue on the road to self-destruction.

The
Keep Guns Out of Schools program would be better called “Snitches for
Riches”.

Mother and wife, Stuter has spent the past ten
years researching systems theory with a particular emphasis on education.
She home schooled two daughters, now grown and on their own. She has worked
with legislators, both state and federal, on issues pertaining to systems
governance and education reform. She networks nationwide with other researchers
and citizens concerned with the transformation of our nation. She has
traveled the United States and lived overseas. Web site: www.learn-usa.com
E-Mail: lmstuter@learn-usa.com

The
only solution that is a solution is to address the underlying philosophy
(humanism) that is the basis of education in the schools today and is
the basis of the problems that plague our society today.